


bloom

by ernjager



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, M/M, Makeovers, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Pining, Recreational Drug Use, Underage Drinking, Young Love, especially Jean, everyone is thirsting for eren, not a high school fic but starts off as one, questionable fluff, time skip
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-30 00:08:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21418948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ernjager/pseuds/ernjager
Summary: Eren chases after Levi fruitlessly for four years, and Levi doesn't recognize his own feelings until every living creature on the planet is hitting on Eren. Then, they're happy together.Their relationship begins in high school, and it never technically ends. Levi just never got the chance to say goodbye.
Relationships: Levi/Eren Yeager
Comments: 18
Kudos: 45





	1. blossom

Their years in middle school had come and gone and their high school years were also rapidly passing by. They were sophomores now, yet every year held the same for Eren. He'd been resolutely admiring Levi from afar for years before eventually making his presence known. It happened frequently now in hopes of pricking the older boy's attention, if at all. Eren was afraid—afraid of being judged and criticized—and for good reason, too. Sometimes he'd manage the courage to croak out some shaky greeting, but Levi typically threw him a gracious glance before walking away.

“Find someone else,” Mikasa said while patting the top of Eren’s head—as if it were the simplest thing in the world, as if he hasn't already spent years in this deep.

Lovenotes and photocards were strewn across the floor, so the two laid on Eren’s bed. Armin laid prone across their legs, half asleep at the foot of it. The lights were off, but the evening sun shone through the curtains and made everything a little less dim.

She continued, “He’s not worth all your high school years.”

“You can’t blame me for thinking I actually have a chance, right? We know he swings this way. Everyone at school found out about the breakup between him and… Farlan—was it?—who dumped him for a girl? The one who had the voice of a prepubescent teenager.”

“Eren—that’s been your excuse for the past year.” Mikasa raised an eyebrow and ran a hand through Eren’s long, brown hair. It was freed of its ponytail and freely drooped along the sheets. “At least put the effort into making up another excuse.”

Eren solemnly leaned back onto his bed and put a pillow over his face. “You’re right,” he muffled. “So I’m too ugly. Well, he hasn’t seen m—”

“Eren,” interrupted Armin, warning.

“It’s true. Out of everyone, you should know this best; even you’ve had a… taste of this.” Eren’s voice was still muffled under the pillow. Neither him nor Mikasa could see the blonde boy physically cringe or twitch an eye.

“Okay, maybe, like, once? It was once.”

“Four times,” corrected Mikasa.

“We were thirteen!” Eren huffed. “And it was experimental.”

“Oh, my phone! What convenient timing. Ha,” Armin chuckled awkwardly. The grin on his face stretched from ear to ear but that didn’t stop him from looking constipated as hell. “Hello? Yeah, I’ll be right out.”

And there was Armin’s lovely boyfriend to pick the two up. He stood to leave without saying goodbye, while Mikasa turned to leave a few last words. 

In her mom voice, she spoke, “One more time. We’ll try one more time. If it doesn’t work, then we leave him alone until he leaves for uni.”

Eren sat up and huffed from his spot on the bed. Then, he held his arms up like a baby, making Mikasa roll her eyes in response and lean in to push his forehead so hard he fell back onto the grey sheets. He laughed and pushed himself back up. She fake-grimaced and knocked the side of Eren’s round glasses with a curt finger so they sat crookedly on the bridge of his nose.

“Gross.”

Eren smiled. “But you love me.”

Eren was left staring at the blank ceiling that night thinking about what she had said. Mikasa’s voice rang in his head. 

He was left with two decisions: keep on trying or leave once and for all. It was simple, really. A big decision for a yet-to-be-fully-grown fifteen-year-old boy. Tomorrow he would turn sixteen, and he hoped birthday magic would work on his pining. Mikasa had made it sound so easy that evening, so smooth, as if one day suddenly not thinking about this boy, not having him run through his mind on a daily, was just that simple. Armin thought that way, too. That was Armin though. He’d always been too kind, too friendly, while Mikasa was too caught up in her own life to be dealing with anyone else’s.

Eren sighed. One more time. Just once more.

“Little Jaeger with the girl’s hair,” Jean sang while leaning on the locker next to Eren’s. Behind him were Marco, that angel, and Connie, who wore a matching smirk and watched in amusement as if Eren were a specimen unseen to them before. When he didn’t respond, Jean jostled him by the shoulder.

Eren slapped his hand off and turned to face the trio. “What.”

“I was thinking that since Spring Break’s coming up in two weeks…”

Eren raised an eyebrow. What did they want with Little Jaeger with the long hair? 

“You’re probably not doing anything, and I’m throwing a party…”

Don’t tell him this was an offer. _What are they up to…?_

“So you wanna do my Spring Break homework?” Jean finished. Marco looked on. Connie giggled from the side. “It’s just for history and geometry and you’re smart, right, Jaeger? So, I’ll get those to you by today, and—”

Eren turned and walked away. As he rounded the corner, he yelled back, “Fuck off, Jean.”

The nerve of some people. What was he, a mule to do their work while they partied and got shit-faced? Not his problem. And geometry… A sophomore in geometry. Eren inwardly shivered at the fact that the boy was two math courses behind what he should’ve been in.

_Whatever. He can deal on his own._

As he walked down the hall, a short, black head of hair and elusive undercut came into view. He knew that head very well, plus everyone else was in the dining hall or courtyard catching their lunch break or studying before the week off. Levi’s back faced him, and he felt prompted to breathe a sharp intake of air, so he did. One more time, only once more and he’d leave him alone if it didn’t work out. So, he walked.

As he got closer, another figure came into focus. Blonde, too tall to be Armin and too built to be, well, anyone. Eren gasped, put his book up to his face, adjusted his frames, and moved inward toward the lockers on the side of the hall.

_Erwin? But why? He graduated last year?_

As if on cue, Erwin rolled his eyes and snapped to the other direction. He stalked down the hall then trotted down the staircase.

Not exactly a choice time for Eren to speak to Levi once more. Said boy fumbled angrily with the pad on his locker for a solid thirty seconds before getting his book and slamming it shut. Eren just stood to watch as it all played out in front of him.

Levi’s phone rang. He seemed to shake as he juggled the device between his books and his hands before holding it to his ear. “Hi, Hanji. Erwin just broke up with me. No, I’m trying not to break down in front of the entire fucking school, are you stupid? Or are you stupid? Who the fuck am I supposed to take to prom now?”

Eren’s ears perked up, and while he knew this wouldn’t be a great time to approach, something in him willed his legs that way. He walked cautiously, careful not to make any bold movements. He ended up right behind Levi and tapped on the shoulder of his beige sweater to garner the other boy’s attention.

“Are you o—”

“Don’t _fucking_ touch me,” the boy snapped. He turned around, eyebrows knitted at the center and near-furious. His eyes flashed in recognition. “Jaeger, I don’t give a flying fuck about what you need to say to me this time but it’s probably exactly the same as every other time. _‘Hi, Levi! What are you doing today? See you in class?’_”

“I just—You need a prom date.” It came out more as a question than a statement.

Levi scoffed. “Fucking hell, yeah. I do. If you think I’m taking you, you’d have a better chance selling nudes to whoever wants them. I doubt anyone will.”

That’s not exactly what he meant, but there was a fury behind those steely eyes that Eren couldn’t understand. He had done nothing to procure this sort of utterance. All he could do was stare, ignore the prying eyes of students around them, and listen. Even at an inch taller than Levi, he felt so small, so weak. At the hand of the person he’d admired for so long, to be humiliated in such a way made him feel so… worthless.

“I’m telling you now to _never_ talk to me. You’re an annoying little bitch, you know that, Jaeger? Why can’t you ever _fucking_ leave me alone?!”

Eren was left speechless with his finger still frozen mid-air from when he tapped the boy on the shoulder a minute ago. His mouth gaped slightly and he felt painful stinging behind his eyes as well as prickling at the corners of them; the droplets would fall if he blinked. His breath began coming out in strangled huffs and whimpers, so he closed his trembling lips, nose flaring with the intent to not burst right then and there, and croaked, “Okay.”

“Leave me the fuck alone, Jaeger,” Levi hissed and turned back to his locker, putting the phone back to his ear.

And Eren did. The floodgates opened; his tears fell in fat droplets and dirtied his lenses, and he sped to the hall’s end down the stairs to go home.

Throughout his four years of chasing Levi, he never once reacted so violently—not even a fraction of that much emotion was ever used with him, neither positive nor negative. He lamented that it was the latter this one and only time. Eren used to be brushed off, ignored, but nothing like _this_ had ever happened.

_What the hell did_ I _do_.

Hanji heard each and every word from the other end of the line, and she couldn’t help but feel bad for the receiving end of Levi’s wrath. It was unlike him, but she knew he was feigning anger in favor of sadness. There was no way Levi wasn’t hurt if his boyfriend of a year just dumped him six weeks before prom. In general, she knew Levi was hurt, and that was the only way he knew to act tough. To not break down and cry in front of his fellow peers.

As his closest friend, she knew about Eren Jaeger, his pining, and his lack of success thereof. Levi didn’t hate him for it—just found it annoying—so she didn’t either. Now she felt genuinely _bad_ for him knowing that the kid idolized her friend so much and just had to hear that from him on arguably his worst day in a long time. She wasn’t even sure if he’d meant what he said, but he wouldn’t let that breakup ruin two people in one day. Levi was the epitome of independence so all he needed for now was time, but maybe Eren was still salvageable. 

“Where are you right now?” she asked once Levi ceased his huffing, probably in attempts to keep his emotions at bay.

“The second floor of the English building. Why.”

“Okay. Take it easy. I’ll talk to you again later. Stay up.”

“Hmp.”

She hung up and inwardly thanked the school officials for placing her locker on the first floor of the English building. She stashed her goods into her bag then made a beeline for the staircase. It seemed she didn’t even need to go far to find who she needed to find because they stumbled from the steps right into her chest.

Eren and Hanji both staggered back from each other, unscathed by the contact. Eren’s eyes, barely visible behind his large, foggy glasses were watery, and tears streamed down his cheeks in fat drops. His nose was red and sniffling. Hanji hated that she understood the reason why and smiled sadly.

Eren knew who she was from his years of pining and was painfully aware that she heard the whole exchange. He opened his mouth like a fish, unable to speak.

“It’s okay. I understand,” Hanji spoke and nodded. She watched his lips tremble and grip tighten around his books, and she couldn’t help but empathize. The boy was extremely, terribly humiliated and likely very heartbroken. She didn’t want to leave him to wallow in this state even if they weren’t acquainted that way, so she did the best she could limited by her position as hardly-known acquaintenace-slash-schoolmate. “Do you wanna smoke to forget? Yeah?”

Eren stared for a long while whilst Hanji just stared back, unable to decipher if it was a sick joke to drug him or not. Given a brief moment to think, he realized he was in no state to care. He sniffled and nodded tentatively. It wouldn’t be his first time, but he wasn’t yet attuned to it either. And Hanji was a good person as far as he knew. 

They ended up in Hanji’s car parked in the farthest corner of the school parking lot with the two sunroofs cracked open. They passed back and forth a long, slender joint with a glass filter that she was verbally priding herself on every other minute—she had been going on and on about her precious filter since before she even rolled the joint. Eren wondered how he let himself get in someone’s passenger side to smoke weed on a Wednesday, but he really couldn’t care. He didn’t care about many things right now, and his wellbeing was one of them. It was eight rounds of puff-puff-pass before he uttered a word. 

“Why are you comforting me?” he asked, releasing a round of smoke pointed out her sunroof. He passed it to her by the glass gingerly.

“I think heartache really sucks,” she said matter-of-factly, puffing once before speaking again. “I know Levi is going through something now too, and I actually might smoke again with him later.” Another drag and puff, then she passed it back to Eren to inhale. Surprising him, she reached up to pet his hair, dragging her deft fingers along the length of it. Then, she pulled the loose hair tie out gently and dropped it on his lap, careful not to rip out any strands. He felt her fingers comb through, not yet reaching his scalp but remarkably calming nonetheless. Or maybe it was the weed. “But I heard what he said to you and I know how much you like him. I thought this might help. Heartache sucks.”

“Yeah,” Eren coughed out, finally letting out a breath. Stoners are nice, he noted. The smoke burned at the back of his throat and came out in ragged pants. “Flower for the Anxious and Impaired.”

She _tch_ed, smiling genuinely and picking out small tangles from his long, soft locks. “Not _impaired_. You’re just anxious! And hurting. And so is Levi.”

He almost laughed at how accurate that was. To his shock again, her hand came down from his hair and alternated between rubbing soothing circles between his shoulder blades and patting to rid his lungs of smoke. Then, plucking the glass from his fingers to save him from a second rough inhalation, she finished off the short stub and removed it from the filter to discard it.

“Better than Liquid Courage,” he presumed aloud.

The world was slow now, and it felt as if his first hostile encounter with Levi had occurred weeks in the past. Each time his green eyes flitted to the dashboard, five minutes had passed. He may not have voiced it, but he was _so_ grateful Hanji had heard what she’d heard and shown up when she did. Otherwise, Eren could have been at home sobbing and dwelling more than he already was. Admittedly, the overwhelming sensation of calm and cloudy thoughts did help a bit.

Hanji may as well have been speaking the whole time, but he couldn’t hear anything past his own thrumming heartbeat. Levi had never, ever reacted so badly to him before today. He felt selfish knowing the other boy just went through _something_—something he didn’t exactly have knowledge of or have the experience nor capacity to fully understand, but Eren knew he at least lost a prom date. His boyfriend, too. He needed to stop with the self-pity, because he wasn’t the only one with feelings. And yet.

“I like him so much.”

“I know, Eren,” she spoke, smiling genuinely directly at him.

That smile had Eren’s lips twitching up into one of his own, and he wondered how being in her presence for thirty minutes had made him so much more comfortable than he’d ever been with Levi. She was really a nice person. Maybe that’s why Levi got along with her so well—she didn’t seem to judge character at all, eyes full of understanding and care. Her brown hair flopped unceremoniously around the frame of her face in the most endearing way. Eren characterized her disposition as being something of a mom and a best friend.

“I don’t even notice how much I like him because everything I do—me doing this pining thing—is just so natural now. We sit next to each other in class and him being there is so… _normal_ for me.”

He thought back to Mikasa’s words yesterday. Today was his last chance, and he blew it. The birthday magic definitely did _not_ work, and he chuckled bitterly at the thought. Sweet sixteen turned shitty.

“Stop crying, boy,” Hanji encouraged with zeal in an attempt at cheer. “Crying is ugly! And you’re not ugly.”

Eren actually laughed this time, irony notwithstanding. He hadn’t noticed his own tears unattractively streaking down his face. His senses were either jaded by the high or numbed by shock and the remnants of humiliation, but he couldn’t decipher which. The earlier scene replayed in his head constantly. “I’m not the school’s ugly Eren with this long-ass hair for nothing.”

“Your long hair is cute. You don’t like it?”

“My dad keeps it long so I look like him. Something about having an only son. The glasses, too.”

Then, a hand came into his line of sight, snatching his glasses off with fervor. With a moment of sobriety, he squeaked in protest and reached out to snatch it back, failing. He couldn’t see it, but he heard Hanji click her tongue. She was looking directly at him.

“Your eyes are so_ green_, Eren,” she mused. She came so close to his face to inspect his moist, flickering orbs that they were almost touching noses. Eren leaned far back into his seat, gulping nonexistent spit into his dry throat. “No, they’re, like, _cerulean_.”

“H—h—thank… you.”

She leaned back into her own seat and returned the lenses, to which Eren gratefully re-sported them.

“You know… today’s my birthday.”

“Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes,” he dragged in the same tone.

A pregnant pause submerged the air, neither of the two speaking up. Then, Hanji’s face lit up as slowly as a sloth’s, she raised an inquisitive finger, and spoke, “We are going to the mall.”

If Eren made a face, he didn’t mean to, but it was definitely visible if Hanji’s slight deflation was any indication. He quickly emoted something else, something akin to joy but not quite, given his circumstances. If she was trying to help cheer him up, he wouldn’t deny that. “Sure.”

“Okay. I’m driving.”

Wait. “Wait, you’re high. You’re high as shit.”

“Haha! That, my little baby Eren, is where you’re wrong. _You’re_ high as shit.”

“I—You’re _not_?”

“Not at all. Don’t you worry your head. I’m basically sober. It takes two and a half of these or a bong to really fuck me up.”

“Okay,” he began. He couldn’t fathom a tolerance that high, but… “Please don’t kill us.”

“Okie.”

“Or, just kill me. Actually, yeah, go ahead.”

She pouted, buckling her seatbelt then his. “Eren; like I said, anxious, not impaired.”

They ended up at the mall not too far from the school. It wasn’t until they opened the doors that Eren realized how much the car absolutely _reeked_ of smoke, and the smell would take weeks to dissipate from her car seats. It had smelled only mildly when he stepped in before. They both probably reeked, too.

As if on cue, Hanji procured a spray bottle of cherry blossom-scented air freshener from her back seats and, without warning, held and moved the stream of mist against Eren’s body like it was a metal detector. He coughed at the sudden intrusion of aromas. She did the same for herself then dropped it into her trunk, unnecessarily belatedly announcing their arrival to the mall.

Stepping through the glass doors, he gazed up in awe at the mall’s extravagant beauty. He was always amazed by how small the mall seemed on the outside compared to its enormous interior. Easter decorations strung from the majority of the stores, candy shops donning most of them. The shiny chandelier located center of the shops even had eggs hanging from it.

It almost made him forget. Almost.

In the midst of his awe, Hanji expertly lugged the smaller-than-her boy to her favorite salon, which was only on the first floor and just across the fountain seating area.

“Oh, Zoe! Are you finally here for a dye?” a large, built, blonde man asked. He stood beside another tall someone with black hair who was drying his hands on a towel. “Bertholdt, can you fetch the pink hair dye?”

“Ha! One day, boys, but not yet. Also, not for me this time. Eren, here… Can you do something?”

“Oh, Hanji, I am not dying my hair pink,” Eren spoke from behind her tall form. He shook her by the sleeve lethargically. “I may be high as shit but I never agreed to this…”

The world might have been moving so slowly around him that he could feel its rotation, but he was _not_ prepared for a hair cutting or dying or anything. His eyes, dry, squinted to take in the salon and its workers, who ogled him expectantly.

A sudden intrusive thought invaded his mind again, and he physically rolled his eyes back in anxiety. He closed his eyes and reconsidered the current situation, feeling like he could’ve fallen asleep right then and there to forget. Anything to forget. Maybe a change wouldn’t hurt.

“Nevermind. I’ll do it.“ He removed himself from her side and boldly self-seated himself into a salon chair, and the last thing he remembered before succumbing to the effects of too much flower, drifting into dreamland, was Hanji barking orders.

“No worries, my little Eren. It won’t be pink. Plus, you would be so flowery and that’s just—ew—wait, maybe that’d be cute.” She made a face and handed her card to one of the workers. “Reiner—you’re still huge—and Bertholdt, could you guys go around the mall and buy some clothes for him? Eren needs to look snatched as hell. Hehe. Petra, makeup? And Annie... you can sit back and watch with me,” Hanji said as she sat on one of the white couches near the front desk. “Annie” took a seat next to her and they simultaneously crossed their legs.

“He’s a heavy-ass sleeper, guys.”

“He looks good. I’d fuck him, and I like pussy.”

“What did I say? Magic. My baby!”

“I can’t believe he’s still asleep. How much sleep does this kid get?”

“It’s the weed, Reiner.”

Eren’s eyes fluttered open to a familiar face and blinked. It took him a few seconds to register his surroundings. “Kindly remove your face from my line of sight, Hanji.”

“Morning, sunshine!” Hanji smiled wide. “I’m just admiring your contacts.”

“How long was I—contacts?!”

Hanji bobbed her head happily, swinging her legs from the front counter. She waved Eren’s phone at him, open on the lockscreen of his mother. “Contacts. For the fun of it and as homage to your mom because you look exactly like her. Honestly, Eren,” she popped the strawberry sucker out of her mouth, “you look _fine_.”

“Agreed.”

“I’d tap.”

From the salon chair, Eren eyed the four employees around him—potential suitors, he thought briefly—and whirled around to face the first mirror he could see. His breath hitched.

His hair was gone. It was short and styled lightly. It was no longer brown but black. His face lacked the frames he needed to see, yet he could see. As he looked closer, he registered that his eyes shone _golden_. He looked like the best male version of Carla Jaeger.

Rimming his golden eyes was a very, very slight bronzey and brown shadow—not enough to cover his entire eyelid but enough to show around the sides. No longer did his eyes shine pure and innocent but dark and elusive. Even in just unfitted black pants and a loose white zip-up hoodie he admitted he looked stunning. He wasn’t even sober yet, but his appearance had given him a moment of complete clarity.

“Gold contacts? How did I not fucking wake up while you put these in? I hope you washed your hands because I refuse to become even more blind,” Eren spoke. He sounded exasperated, but in actuality he was ecstatic.

“We used silicon tweezers!” Petra yelled from the side.

“You’ve turned me into a monster.”

“A hot one.” Hanji clicked her tongue, waving the sucker around. “Who knew you had it in you? The makeup, spot on.”

Eren let an upward twitch of his lips slip. “Yeah… This looks good.”

“Anyway,” Hanji pulled Eren up and shoved about a dozen shopping bags from various stores into his hands while nudging him towards the front of the salon. “These are all yours. Wear something nice to school tomorrow.”

Eren gaped. “Thank you, Hanji. You really… I can’t believe you did this. And thank you guys.” He turned to the others.

“_Where’s Jaeger_?” was Levi’s first thought that Thursday morning when the seat next to him lacked a little dud with glasses. He was an attentive and studious little thing and wouldn’t be missing class if he didn’t have to.

He shook himself out of that reverie quickly.

“_Why do I care_?” was Levi’s second thought when he realized that that was probably the most concern he’s harbored for him since that time he was absent for two weeks in Levi’s junior year only to find out the kid was on vacation in the Bahamas.

It’s not as if Levi was concerned about him. He already had Erwin on his mind and three exams the next day. 

Eren took the next day of school off in favor of rethinking his life and stuffing his face with cheesecake at home. The heart needed rest, too.

Nevertheless, Eren woke up two hours earlier on Friday to do three things: his hair, his light makeup, and breakfast, because his mom refused to talk to him after he came home with a fake lip piercing two nights before. She held no remorse for her son, even when he looked exactly like her—and though she was more than giddy about that, she couldn’t let it surpass her feigned distress.

(She didn’t know about the actual belly piercing he’d been talked into by Hanji who had a matching one. A shiny silver barbell with a small, raven jewel right in the center. High school, right?)

His eyes emulated the buttered pancakes he stomached for breakfast, and he was surprised none of the carefully applied eyeshadow fell into his soup (or maybe it did. He didn’t know). Either way, he replicated the hair and miniscule makeup as per instructions by Petra and wore black fitted jeans cuffed at the ankle to reveal some skin with a tannish beige henley, sleeves rolled a quarter of the way up, courtesy of Bertholdt and Reiner. It slitted about two inches down from the neckline and held together with short brown drawstrings. Eren had never worn anything fitted to school before, and, truthfully, it really highlighted the slight curve of his backside and lean physique. Quite a get-up and probably something Mikasa would have appropriated for a get-together rather than school. But it’s not like he had anyone to impress anytime soon, he bitterly recalled.

His brief trip to school felt even shorter than usual with all the thoughts rushing through his head. Yesterday was the last day he would pursue Levi. He promised Mikasa and knew it would be in his best interest (and Levi’s, too) to halt the efforts. Nothing would come of it, he told himself. Nothing came of it in two years and he had finally, finally gotten big-time hurt because of it; nothing would come of it now. His efforts were futile, though he was slightly glad he could move on. Now it was clear as day to him that Levi would be happier if Eren removed himself from his life. Plain and simple.

Standing in front of the door to his classroom with only a textbook in hand, he awaited his impending death. He didn’t know how the others would react. Hell, he almost fainted himself.

One deep breath in, one breath out. Another breath in, another out.

He slid the door open with a free hand and took one step in. That one step was enough for the entire class to turn, mouths gaping open like dead fish as if they’d witnessed a man-eating giant rather than a boy.

The boy in the limelight blinked twice before he bluntly spoke, “What.”

From the back of the standstill classroom came a two-toned whistle. Eren looked back to find the culprit—shockingly, finding it to be none other than Jean. Beside him, Marco stared incredulously and smacked the side of his head. Jean paid him no mind, though, and merely snapped upright, keeping his eyes glued on Eren in the front. As did everyone else. “_Damn_, Jaeger.”

He smiled politely at the struck students and treaded down the aisle to his seat as the classroom sat in silence. In the brief seconds it took for him to reach his desk, students, of whom he assumed played for both sides, whispered about him—some angry, some confused, some amazed.

“He was ugly. How’d that happen in a day.”

“I would screw that ass into the next country. Who knew?”

“Do you think he would fuck me if I asked nicely…”

“Connie, shut the fuck up. He’d fuck _me_.”

“Were his eyes always that beautiful? Holy shit.”

“We’ve been missing out…”

By the time he reached his desk, he was struggling to keep from trembling at the immense amount of attention he was receiving. And it was good attention. His confidence level had spiked tenfold in a mere twelve steps. He dropped the book onto the desk with a content sigh. It felt nice to be appreciated for once, even for something as superficial as this. He did inhabit a body to be proud of, despite everyone else’s prior lack of knowledge. Amidst the uproar, he realized one figure in the class hadn’t said a word.

Eren glanced to the left of his desk against his will to catch a glimpse of steely grey eyes.

And there was Levi, all pointed nose and furrowed brows, mouth wide open and blinking so rapidly you’d think he were about to faint. He gulped. “Jaeger.”

Eren almost responded when a heather grey t-shirt and black-blue flannel blocked the view. He looked up and suddenly the same boy making fun of him two days prior was sheepishly twiddling his thumbs in front of him. “So, Jaeg—Eren… Remember that, ah, party I told you about? Heh.”

“The one you weren’t inviting me to?” Eren raised a brow. “Yeah, I do.”

“No! No,” Jean anxiously refuted. He waved his hands in front of him in denial. “No, it’s not like that. Well, I’m—er, we. We’re inviting you now… No, I mean. Sorry! Wait—”

Connie popped up beside him and rolled his eyes. “What this dumb shit is trying to say is that we invited you on Wednesday but wanted to make sure you knew you were invited.”

“Right, Jeanipoo?” Marco yelled from the back.

“Uh—I, yes! Yes.”

Eren laughed and it made half the classroom gasp.

“So pretty…”

“Jean, shut up oh my god. He’s right in front of you.”

“Sure. I’ll go,” Eren chuckled. "I, uhh, know you didn’t want me to go, but I’ll take it anyway.”

Jean looked down in surprise and suddenly fell to his knees, grabbing one of Eren’s hands. Marco, who was approaching from his spot in the back, glanced down at Jean and sighed. “Thank you so much. I’m sorry for being stupid, I just—you’re really pretty right now and—and—your teeth are so nice I’m yelling on the insi—”

“Ooookay!” Marco exclaimed with a huge forced smile, grabbing onto Jean by the shoulders and dragging him away as best he could. “Let’s get Jean some place he won’t faint! Uh, Jaeger, I’ll… text you the address?”

“You don’t have my number.”

“Right. Could I, uh, have it?” He smiled awkwardly albeit charmingly.

“Oh my god, even Marco is going for him.”

“Jaeger is getting all the ass. Literally.”

Eren looked around in false contemplation and gave in, sighing. “I guess you can.” He hastily scribbled the digits on a piece of notebook paper with navy blue ink and tucked it into the pocket of Marco’s short-sleeve button-up.

“Thanks, Jaeger. I’ll let you know what’s up.” And Marco proceeded to drag his dazed boy back to their seats before class began.

With the walkway on his left finally vacant, he found Levi in the exact same position and emoting the exact same facial expression he wore minutes ago.

Two weeks after his birthday, Eren sat on his bed doing homework. The evening sun shone orange through his windows and dimly lit up the room, just barely enough before he had to turn on the lights. His windows were open, allowing a slight breeze. It was serene.

His phone vibrated uncharacteristically, stirring him from his intense focus on precalculus. He never really received texts because he preferred calls, so if Armin or Mikasa were attempting to reach him, they would dial. He reached for the device across his bed and sat back when he’d retrieved it.

**(408) 330-1225:** _hey brat. it’s levi._

Well. Eren definitely wasn’t expecting that. How did he even get his number? Did he search Eren’s Facebook profile for it? And why now, after that scene in the English building? It was unlikely given Levi’s disinterest in him, but still. He wanted to ask anyway. His brows furrowed in confusion as he swiped the screen up to open the full conversation.

**me:** _how.._  
**Levi:** _shitty glasses gave me your number._  
**Levi:** _she didn’t fucking tell me she and you had a little escapade together._

As far as Eren was concerned, this man held zero, nada, zip, nein interest in him. Bemused, he held his phone for a few minutes, rereading the short exchange, and proceeded with caution. 

**me:** _im sorry but why do you care?_  
**Levi:** _because i’m sorry i yelled at you. she told me you cried._  
**Levi:** _look, i don’t hate you, but that was a bad day for me._  
**me:** _it was for me too_  
**Levi:** _sorry._

He laughed incredulously to himself, disbelieving that his first extended exchange with the person he more or less worshipped for years was prompted by the fact the he cried. He was humiliated. And he didn’t understand why Levi was making an effort to apologize. He was confused.

**me:** _you’ve rejected all my pining attempts for years and expect me to believe you dont hate me now_  
**me:** _i don’t understand_  
**Levi:** _have i ever yelled at you, brat? i don’t fucking hate you._

He was about to respond _yes_, hell yes you have, but another message came too soon after for him to type a word.

**Levi:** _other than that time._  
**me:** _then why_  
**me:** _because i look decent now? because now that ive backed off of you, half the school population is on my ass??_

The conversation paused. Without a reply for a few minutes, Eren set his phone back down. He was only halfway through his next problem when another text came. 

**Levi:** _that’s not why. i don’t know how to explain it but just don’t ignore me._  
**Levi:** _or move back into the seat next to mine—sasha is fucking infuriating and her crumbs literally fucking transcend onto my desk._  
**me:** _give me a good reason to_  
**Levi:** _don’t make me. i already said i can’t explain it._  
**me:** _if you cant then theres literally no reason for me to do anything_  
**me:** _you ignored me for four years and this is the most youve ever spoken to me_  
**me:** _and its through the fucking phone_  
**me:** _i dont see why i should do anything you ask of me_

An hour of silence ensued. Eren knew it. He’d probably stop talking to him right then and there; he’d never receive a text back.

He finished the rest of his math homework when his phone went off for the first time in an hour and a half.

**Levi:** _brat. i like you._

And Eren’s heart started thrumming like some heavy, unfamiliar drum beat. Even his own labored breathing became audible to him.

No. This was some sick, fucked up joke. This was Jean through the phone, and Eren was going to tell him to fuck off, and he was going to get ready for bed and face the day tomorrow as if this exchange didn’t happen. He could do that if he stopped replying right now.

But Jean hadn’t been the same mean-spirited boy since Eren showed up that day in homeroom and he doubted the boy would ruin his attempts at getting into Eren’s pants this way; and if this were Levi, Eren knew him. He knew Levi was difficult to get along with, was oddly clean freak-ish, held his cups in a weird way, and disregarded nearly everyone who wasn’t Hanji. But he never knew Levi to harbor any malicious intent, as formidable as his eyes were. He was respectable and fearsome but never dishonest. So it couldn’t have been a joke. It wasn’t… was it?

Presumably, Eren’s hesitance in response prompted a continuation of Levi’s.

**Levi:** _i like you. i didn’t realize i liked you till you had every living creature on the planet hitting on you._  
**Levi:** _sue me._

So it was probably, most definitely him. Levi. Eren was finally done getting over him, and he decided to just materialize back into his life like this. He supposed he couldn’t blame Levi for wanting to apologize, late as it was. But this just _wasn’t_ what he was expecting out of the impromptu text exchange. In fact it was the last thing he could’ve imagined.

Nonetheless, Eren felt some sort of strange relief at the confession. While he had willed away his feelings for the past two weeks, they hadn’t necessarily disappeared. But still, for Levi to come to that realization only when “the entire planet” began to hit on him… Eren closed his eyes and laughed through his nose.

If the feelings were genuine, he wouldn’t mind that Levi only came to this realization after his appearance do-over. After all this, he’d even take it through text.

**me:** _if you could hear me right now… know im sighing_  
**me:** _i cant believe ive been waiting to hear that from you for four years and i finally got it because i took off my glasses_  
**Levi:** _shut up, brat._  
**Levi:** _no, not in that way._  
**me:** _i know_  
**Levi:** _just trying to be careful._  
**me:** _thank you_  
**me:** _and_  
**me:** _i like you too._  
**me:** _if it wasnt obvious._  
**Levi:** _it was._

One spring night after everything with Levi had gone down, Eren was walking his dog—his big, brown, German shepherd baby girl named Yami—some blocks around his neighborhood. He was dressed simply in a baggy baby pink hoodie and white sweat-shorts, drawstrings tucked in. As he and Yami roamed through some well-lit, seemingly larger, wealthy neighborhoods, he contemplated the past month of his life.

Six weeks passed since that pivotal text conversation he shared with Levi. They no longer texted—hardly, ever, unless it was during school between classes or to send pictures of themselves on the toilet, brushing their teeth, fucking around with other people, or posed cutely (mostly on Eren’s part). They called frequently, they spent some weekends together traveling cities away for buttery sashimi platters and renowned three tea-flavored ice creams (for Levi), and they spent their school days doing homework in the blossoming courtyard during lunch. Levi helped him with precalculus (he was in calculus 2) and taught him French, and Eren taught him the little Japanese he knew from anime as well as brought him lunch. Eren learned that Levi’s favorite lunch was kimchi fried rice with a fried egg on top and a canister of hot tea. Levi returned the favor with gourmet lattes and cappuccinos that he learned to make at work in the mornings when he picked Eren up before school. Levi was to graduate soon, so they figured spending their limited high school mornings together would be nice. Eren’s house was en route to the school anyway, and they shared homeroom together.

To the dismay of many of their classmates, schoolmates, generally anyone who witnessed Eren after his transformation (and especially to the dismay of Jean Kirschtein), Eren and Levi sat next to each other near the front of the room once again. Connie, Marco, and Jean still looked on longingly from the back of the classroom, as did everyone else.

Two weeks ago, Eren took up Levi’s offer for his then-purposeless second prom ticket. He threw together a last-minute fit—a skinny fit ice grey suit, pants, and fitted vest over a white dress shirt. Levi wore a fully black suit and maroon dress shirt underneath, and they both forgoed ties to let the statement pieces speak for themselves. Preceding the event, they pregamed with Hanji then stalked through the entrance halls at due time. Needless to say, each and every attendee had _gawked_ at the, quote on quote, “hot sophomore” whom Levi proudly held onto by the waist as they drunkenly danced the night away.

They kissed for the first time in the photobooth, all soft presses and gentle eyelash-fluttering caught on a strip. The worker handling the printing flushed as he handed it to them, but they couldn’t have cared less in their stupors and snatched the two copies, tucking them away before continuing to dance.

Later, they went back to the worker and asked him to print two small-scale copies of the single photo of them sharing a kiss. In the picture, Eren wore silver-white bunny ears whereas Levi sported fuzzy black cat ones. Levi’s hands cupped gently at Eren jaw as they smiled through pressed lips, eyes fluttered closed in elation, while Eren’s own hands held Levi’s wrists. They both secured the photo behind their phones.

While they hadn’t fucked after prom as expected of any senior’s prom night, they shared their first kiss and their first—or, Eren’s first blowie (both giving and receiving) after prom in the front seats of Levi’s steely BMW. He had parked on a hill that overlooked the city and they, romantically, gave each other head to the low, sultry thrumming of Levi’s sex playlist. Levi having a sex playlist was one of the few things Eren didn’t know about him before and he didn’t want to know what its purpose was before him, but if it was always going to make the wet suction on his pulsating cock that much more mind-numbing, he wouldn’t bother asking.

Recounting it all, he couldn’t help but feel so utterly elated at the unexpected turn of events.

“Are you gonna hurt him?” Hanji asked.

Maybe Hanji thought Levi was still caught up on Erwin—but no, he wouldn’t hurt Eren. Eren had presented more in a partner than he initially thought he would and was making him happier in a few weeks than Erwin ever did in a year. A part of him resented himself for the past two years he had been in close quarters with the brat and paid him no mind just because he had always been caught up in someone else, e.g, Farlan or Erwin. Truthfully, he had never gotten a good look at the brat’s face until he took off his glasses and Levi finally experienced the glistening expanse of viridian and emerald and cerulean behind them. When he wasn’t wearing those damned contacts at least. He was truly beautiful, and Levi hated that he didn’t see it before. He hated it.

And yet, despite the current adoration for his cute new lover, Erwin still occupied the forefront of his mind. The image of his being invaded Levi’s thoughts daily—his piercing glacial eyes, full eyebrows, strong shoulders as they stood over him, large hands and what they used to do to him…

He shuddered. It was as if he had never gotten the closure he needed to properly end their relationship. Truthfully, though, he didn’t. Recollecting their time together, he couldn’t pinpoint a time or event that could have caused it. Nothing foreshadowed their end, and perhaps that was why he felt so lost thinking about it.

One day, the big, burly blonde showed up to his school and just _ended it_. Right there. No warning whatsoever.

Since then, Levi had forgoed deleting their pictures as he would’ve with any other ex-lover not knowing why and had yet to delete the social media posts of them together as the other man had. He knew this because he still, nevertheless begrudgingly, checked Erwin’s profiles on occasion, which he knew Eren would be wary about. He felt like shit doing it but still couldn’t prevent himself from doing so.

Interrupting his thoughts, Hanji spoke from her spot at the foot of his bed, “That boy had a lot to say about you when he cried to me, you know. I think he loved you, like, _way_ back in middle school.”

“Yeah, he mentioned that,” Levi replied, propping his legs up onto his desk beside his laptop. The roller chair creaked as it slid back on carpet. He glanced left to watch Hanji fiddle with her phone ring. He continued, “When he first started following me around, he’d been watching me play soccer from the middle school. God, I was actually fucking ugly in freshman year. Don’t know what the fuck he saw that he liked.”

“But he did _like you_ even though you were ugly and short and he didn’t even know you,” she mused. “The kid really loves you.”

“I didn’t say short.”

“Okay, and?”

“I’m gonna kick you in the head, Zoe.”

“Eren thinks your legs are strong and he’d probably be okay with that if you sent him a video.”

“...Erwin thought my legs were strong, too.” He unconsciously made a suggestive smile to himself before catching it and willing it away, hoping Hanji didn’t see. But she definitely did, and she frowned, kicking his rolling chair. It rattled and shifted, and for a moment Levi thought he would fall to his death right there. Maybe he deserved it for having these thoughts with a wonderful boy at his side.

“Don’t hurt Eren like that.”

He sighed, exasperated with himself. “I know, Zoe. I’m trying. It’s still fresh, the Erwin… break up.”

“Just say it, Levi. The break up. You guys broke up!” she yelled exasperatedly, throwing her hands up. She sat up and her frown softened, eyes turning understanding. She nudged the arm of Levi’s rolling chair with her right foot so he rotated to face her. “I know it hurts and it’s okay to hurt, but you have a very loyal—literally, he’s proven himself plenty—boy at your side now. And you actually like him this time around.”

Sometimes he couldn’t take the pitying looks Hanji harbored for him because he knew she was trying to aid a hopeless cause. If there was any way he would get over these lasting Erwin feelings, he would do it himself on his own terms. He sighed audibly. She wasn’t wrong, obviously not, but he was on his own to cease feeling this way.

He pushed himself up from his chair and made way to the closet to change. Hell week (finals week) was over, graduation was next week, it was a refreshing late-May evening, and they had a pre-graduation let’s-get-fucked-up-one-last-time-before-adulthood party to attend. Though, some rich kid from last year’s graduating class was hosting it probably as an excuse to invite a few hundred people to get fucked with him. Or fuck him. Levi wasn’t complaining either way. 

“Let’s just get ready for the party. I’m tired of this shithole and ecstatic as hell to get the fuck out.”

“Yes! Tonight, we celebrate.”

At the party, Levi was on his twelfth shot of peach vodka or soju or something, and he reeked of marijuana. Not that he smoked it himself, no, he would never get crossed irresponsibly like that, but Hanji clung to him like a baby when she was any sort of intoxicated, and right then she was about twenty experimental bong hits into heaven. It was her new glass bong, which she was so excited to pass around; and now Levi reeked. His breath smelled like pure alcohol with fruity traces, or so Hanji claimed as she sniffed around his personal space.

They sat inside on one of the comfier lounging areas, one of many inside the huge expanse of living the host owned. Around them, the walls flashed blue and red and pink and green so vividly he couldn’t remember the original color of the walls—maybe in tune with the music, too, but he genuinely couldn’t tell. His head was probably going to pound the same way the speakers were tomorrow morning judging by the shots he downed—oh, and they had a DJ. They hired a fucking _DJ_ for this party, Levi realized. How cool.

As much as he wanted to stand up and move, he had a Hanji to nurse, a Hanji who was basically asleep thanks to her incessant bong-passing, and didn’t want to leave her to the rest of the party-goers’ vices.

As if on cue, though, their friend Moblit plunked himself right on Levi’s other side and shot them a curt greeting, and Levi wondered if he was sober by the way his eyes shone with clarity and his posture didn’t waver as he sat upright.

“Are you sober?” he asked, eyes narrowed.

“Yeah,” Moblit laughed. “I’m D.D. Is she okay?”

He was referring to Hanji. “Yeah, she’s high as fuck. That’s all.”

“Oh, do you need me to take care of her? You look like you’re stuck here.” What an angel. Levi didn’t even have to ask.

“Yes, yes, actually. Thanks.” He got up, passed Hanji’s bong to him, and waved them goodbye—why’d he wave them goodbye—before proceeding to the greater mass of bodies.

He was probably fifteen minutes into dancing his drunken little heart out like he was reliving prom before feeling a strangely familiar, not-Eren pair of hands politely dance around his waist. A brief moment of sobriety had him whirling around to meet eyes with none other than icy ones, very familiar, very piercing icy ones, and he slapped the hands away.

“Levi.”

“Erwin.”

He reached for Levi’s waist again, but he narrowly avoided it by swerving his hips in a certain way. Levi swore he saw Erwin’s gaze linger too long on his lower body when he did so. He didn’t want to overthink it. They were dancing still, moving to the beat in the crowd and pressed up against sweaty bodies—Levi made note to scrub even more vigorously in the shower later—but separately.

“Would you like to talk? We didn’t get to much that day.” He was so calm. Characteristically so.

He definitely wasn’t wrong about that. Levi had been pondering his own faults and possible causes for their separation since that day, and so curiosity overwhelmed him. Despite all the voices in his head urging him to say no, he said, “Yeah. Sure.”

Erwin offered to speak with him outside where the premises were clearer than the stuffed living room, and while Levi felt hesitant to lose sight of Hanji, he knew Moblit to be a good person with a clear conscience who would take care of her if need be. He also figured asking to speak on the front patio was better than asking to talk in a private bedroom, so he agreed.

“How are you? Or… How have you been?” the blonde asked once they were settled. Levi tried not to make note of how that deep baritone rattled in his chest. In a moment of clarity, he recognized the voice playing over and over in his head like a mantra, unwillingly on his part.

They sat together on a two-seat cushioned patio swing with a canopy overhead facing the large expanse of garden-lawn, and Levi’s senses suddenly peaked with the familiar close proximity they were engaged in.

“Fine, I guess. Kind of fine now. Wasn’t fine back there, two months ago.”

Hurting by the hand of his ex-lover was one thing, but sitting next to him, feeling his warmth, inhaling his scent all over again made Levi feel, if not nostalgia, longing. Longing for someone who was no longer his but made him feel ways no one else before had. The hurt still pounded fresh in his mind and his chest, and he knew that if he didn’t get out of this situation soon, he would do something he would later regret. Or at least something Hanji would make him regret. But maybe he wanted to. Needed to, for closure’s sake. There were too few people around compared to the inside of the house to stop him. Too many rights and wrongs and urges pounded in his head, yet not because of the liquor. 

“Actually, I—” he laughed, _laughed_, in his stupor. He wanted to let it all out, to release a huge weight off his chest. He continued, stabilizing his voice, “I’d never felt as miserable as I had the week after you broke up with me. Even with Farlan I wasn’t that much of a bitch about it.”

Erwin’s hand came to rest on Levi’s inner thigh, though in no way sexual and probably as a familiar means of comfort. Levi’s breath nearly hitched anyway, but he willed his voice to continue. He nudged the swing slightly back with his toes that barely reached the wood of the deck, hoping the resulting momentum would soothe his nerves in some way. It began to sway back and forth gently.

He wanted to think of Eren, Eren, Eren only. He thought of shining viridian eyes, unstyled, tousled hair, and his enchanting smile. When he felt calm, he would speak.

He reasoned that what he couldn’t fix with words could be mended another way, so he hoped he wouldn’t regret asking for the closure he felt he needed next. He hoped Hanji wouldn’t reprimand him terribly for it. He wasn’t sure if his sober self would agree with him either, but his sober self’s two cents was the last thing on his mind. The man beside him was not. Even if Levi wanted him to be, the familiar, _comforting_ scent, presence, and touch were clawing at his reasoning, forcing themselves in.

“I got with that brat, the one I always told you followed me around. It turns out he’s a nice fucking boy with a penchant for admiration, if not a bit of hero worship,” Levi laughed downcastedly, eyes closed. “But he’s great. He’s wonderful. And I’m telling you this because I feel like I need one thing from you if I’m ever to move on c-completely, and I swear I mean it without strings attached. Or, without however many strings I don’t already have attached to you.”

“Shoot.” Go for it.

The swings stopped swaying in tandem with Levi’s ceasing breath. He really, really hoped Hanji wouldn’t make him regret this, so much as he knew he would regret it himself. It wasn’t the alcohol at fault, though; this was all on Levi, and he knew.

“Kiss me. One last time.” 

During his walk with Yami, Eren found himself in one of the wealthier, cleaner neighborhoods. He contemplated heading back, because there seemed to be a _huge_ house party mid-block and Yami was _not_ good with drunk people. He reckoned her aversion to alcohol was due to Eren’s own dislike of his alcoholic and verbally abusive uncle during his early teen years. He supervised Eren when Carla and Grisha Jaeger went out of town, which was often. They actually got the German shepherd for Eren, too, to protect him whenever they couldn’t be home with him. So as a puppy, she learned to resent those who gave off the stench of alcohol because of her little owner’s resultant emotional pain whenever he encountered someone carrying that stench. She knew when he was hurt and undoubtedly loved him more than anyone else. Eren loved her to the moon and back, too, pointy black snout and triangle ears and all.

However, not many people riddled the front deck of that house and most seemed to be seated on patio sofas, intoxicated but calm. The patio was a ways away from the sidewalk past an expansive lawn, too, so Eren proceeded walking her through the neighborhood, pausing to pet her between the ears at every street lamp to check if she was okay. She panted lightly and happily at him each time.

As he reached the house that blared music, he tried to keep his gaze on the concrete lined up in front of him as to look as unwelcoming as possible. He didn’t need any drunk party-goers running from the patio steps down the garden path to pet his dog. He really did not need any liability lawsuit cases thrown his way; he was only sixteen.

A penchant sound, a laugh, commanded his attention, though, and his head snapped to face its direction. He stopped walking, and Yami looked back questioningly.

While it was nighttime and this house was situated between street lamps making it as dim as it could possibly be, the past four years had trained Eren’s eyes to find Levi, so he saw him. He saw him stop swaying on that patio swing, he saw Erwin’s hand set on Levi’s inner thigh, deeper than should be deemed friendly, and he watched his boyfriend and his boyfriend’s ex-boyfriend lean in toward each other, noses touching.

Eren tensed. He felt helpless, unable to do a thing but stare.

Levi initiated it—_Levi initiated it_—pressing his lips against… Erwin’s… gently at first. Eren witnessed maybe twenty grueling seconds of lips moving lightly together before Levi—_Levi_—raised his right hand to tangle it in the other man’s hair and slanted their lips together. Eren swore he could see their tongues flicking in and out of their mouths as if they’d done it a thousand times before.

Erwin’s hands raised from his sides to firmly grip the smaller man’s waist, and with their mouths connected, Erwin’s hands slipped under the sides of Levi’s shirt, and he hoisted him up so Levi could swing his right leg over Erwin’s thighs to straddle him. Levi didn’t protest—and Eren’s heart broke. If it had shattered into a million pieces inside his chest, Eren was sure he heard it.

He wanted to throw up. He wanted to wash his eyes out with acid, he wanted to regurgitate all the meals he’d ever shared with Levi and his heart along with it. His eyes welled with tears before he even knew it, and he let out a strangled whimper, lips trembling.

At that moment, Yami looked back up at him almost understandingly, as if she had witnessed the same scene countless times over, and all he wanted to do was run her back home and cry with her on his bed. He wasn’t going to be humiliated like this again.

Before he could make a move, though, she looked back at the source of blaring lights and alcohol and, against her owner’s will, she barked. _Loud_.

Eren’s eyes widened, and he stumbled to his knees to calm the agitated canine all whilst struggling terribly to dam his sobs, gasping and trembling and sniffling up all he could. He hastily stood back up to make a run for it back home, but his eyes got the better of him before he set off, and he witnessed Levi look back, recognition flashing in his drunken eyes. He clumsily separated from the other man and shot upright, meeting Eren’s gaze.

Then he was running toward the center steps, intoxicatedly stumbling down them and through the garden path to meet his boyfriend on the sidewalk. He shouted bouts of _something_ to the deaf ears of Eren, who couldn’t hear a thing over his own racing thoughts.

Levi couldn’t make it within ten steps of the other boy before Yami’s sharp canine nose sniffed a whiff of someone who was going to hurt her owner. She barked her deep German shepherd bark ferociously and incessantly, drawing the attention of those on the deck. 

Eren merely stepped back, willing himself not to sob at the mercy of a dozen or more witnesses and especially not at Levi and Erwin. He spoke, looking directly into Levi’s clouded grey eyes, voice trembling. “Pl-please, don’t say anything to me. I—I’m going home… Get home safely yourself.”

He looked back up at the patio deck once more before leaving, but he didn’t know why. Horrifyingly, he met gazes with Erwin, whose eyes showed no malice but no remorse either. Just nothingness.

At that, he resigned his gaze back to the ground and took off running the way he came. Levi, in his stupor, did nothing but watch the boy’s back retreat in the distance.

That was the last Levi saw of Eren.

Come time to begin college for Levi, he still had not heard from Eren.

At his graduation, no one had attended for him save for Hanji. She was a grad herself, though, and that hardly could have counted. His bum of an uncle hadn’t shown. Erwin hadn’t shown—not that he’d wanted him to. Eren hadn’t shown as he’d promised either, but Levi couldn’t hold him accountable for that. He only blamed himself and his stupid, stupid drunken decisions, though he knew intoxication did not qualify as a valid excuse.

He ruled visiting Eren’s house out of the question, mostly due to the fact that he wasn’t sure if he could face the boy himself. He had wronged a boy who he _knew_ was head over heels for him so terribly hard all for his own selfish desires. There was no way in living hell Eren wanted to see his face lest he punch Levi in the throat or do something painful with that temper of his. Levi may have believed he did then, but he knew now that he did _not_ need to make out with Erwin to get over him. He needed time, and he needed Eren, temper and all.

Eren blocked him on every platform imaginable after that night, which he learned when he tried to text the boy the day after and the messages wouldn’t go through. He could no longer find Eren’s social media profiles on any platform, and he found even his old Maplestory character was blocked when he rebooted the thing during summer.

Hanji was also blocked, though he doubted the boy meant to block her over aversion to her (as he assumed applied to himself) rather than her association with him. The loss she felt at losing communication to the “green-eyed cutie” was almost comparable to Levi’s. Almost.

Levi even questioned Jean once during the summer at his workplace. He happened to show up at the little coffee shop one day, and Levi took the chance to interrogate him for Eren’s whereabouts. He came up empty.

“I was tryna get a piece of his ass all the same, man,” he had said. “No idea where Jaeger is now.”

Levi’s jaw clenched at the declaration, and he waved Jean off with a to-go caramel latte. While they had never officially separated, he figured Eren wasn’t his to be jealous over anymore if the cutting-off-and-never-speaking-to-again was of any indication. So he forced a calm over himself.

He didn’t know what to do. There was nothing he could do with no openings or chances Eren could have given him to make it right. He would continue on with his schooling and hope for the best. Perhaps it was truly time to live his life without that green-eyed brat for the first time in years. He didn’t want to, and while this would have sounded like the best case scenario for him a year ago, now it made him feel empty. Lost. Incomplete.

Heartbroken, again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> where has eren gone??? ohoho oh yeah it hurts


	2. familiar stranger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> excuse the way the chapter starts off but _shhh_ trust the process.

In the past seven years after Levi, Eren has been in two relationships.

Following his sophomore year of high school, the Jaegers, including Yami Jaeger, spent a summer in Germany visiting family. They stayed in the grand German home of Carla’s parents and spent a summer taking advantage of the massive backyard pool, full vegetable garden, and expansive front yard. Carla and Yami especially had a wonderful time. Eren was just grateful for the distance from home and all the familial distractions to keep his mind from delving into unhealthy territory.

A summer in Germany ended up becoming a full two years as his grandmother fell ill, and Carla insisted they spend her remaining days with her. Eren was heartbroken at the time, and he couldn’t deny that the time away would help him. He didn’t even attempt to protest, to the great pleasure of his mother.

He began his junior year at a German high school. He was struck by how similar the course regimen was to his own school’s back home, and he wasn’t complaining at the ease he felt in his courses. It turned out he had been taking math courses two courses ahead of what they studied at this school. To his own surprise, he excelled in all courses, especially English.

(He was grateful that they were a country that frequently spoke English, though he didn’t mind busting out his German when he needed to. He spoke both comfortably, thanks to his parents.)

His junior-year psychology class introduced him to a boy named Mylius. They partnered up together for a video project that involved doing something shell-shocking in public, and they ended up bonding over taking turns biting into whole lemons and onions in front of store attendants while the other hid and filmed on his phone to record their reactions. They laughed so hard while editing the videos that Eren peed his pants a little, and they hit it off from there.

He was a beautiful boy if Eren had any say—something of a celestial sort of beauty. His hazel eyes were kind, and his ash blonde hair was soft to the touch of the pads of Eren’s fingers. Mylius seemed to be the sun, and he reminded Eren of someone who was more reminiscent of the moon.

That shining beauty had Eren courting Mylius for a full three months before the boy agreed to be his psychology-and-not partner long-term. Eren was overjoyed. They tied the knot on New Year’s Eve and shot fireworks in Eren’s bed till New Year’s morning.

The next year and a half proceeded smoothly—smoother than Eren thought his life with a partner could ever go after Levi. He continued into his senior year with Mylius and ended it the same way. They graduated together, threw their white and gold-tasseled caps into the air, and shared a kiss at the announcement that they were finally out.

To the shock of each and every one of his family members, Eren graduated as co-valedictorian to a few other students. His years spent completing an apparently advanced regimen at home aided in his success tenfold, and by the time his senior year ended, he felt as if he’d only learned what he had up until the end of his sophomore year back home. While he did feel a bit cheated of his education, he knew the school wouldn’t have implemented such a system if it didn’t work for the students. And he was doing well, so he wasn’t one to complain. 

His grandmother was especially pleased with him, brimming with pride. When he announced it to her at her bedside, she told him in that frail, weakening voice of hers that if she had passed right then, she would have died happy. He held her veiny hand in his own, asking her to at least see him in his cap and gown first. He didn’t know what else to say.

Needless to say, she did see him come home in his cap and gown. The Jaegers spent most of that summer in his bedridden grandmother’s room, making the most of what they deemed limited. During the autumn the year before, Eren had applied to universities both at home and in Germany in case. If his grandmother passed before summer ended, he would go home. If she didn’t, he would stay. The decision not to just fly back home solo was a difficult one to make due to his reluctant parents, so he decided to let fate decide.

And fate, unfortunately for the Jaeger family, decided it was best for Eren to attend school back home. They held the funeral for his grandmother two weeks after her passing. It took place on a late-June morning, and half of the townspeople came. The Jaegers had been known for their generous grandmother, the woman who baked soft lemon cookies on Sundays and strolled around town to hand them out, parcel by parcel. It was no surprise when the funeral-goers brought bunches of lemons to leave by her grave for the lemons to return to the earth just as his grandmother had.

After the funeral, they all packed their suitcases to head back home. The first day of higher education for Eren began in early August. So, in his melancholy, he packed his bags, spent a final night with Mylius, and terminated his year and a half-long relationship with him at the airport’s departure terminal. Eren had glanced back through the security gates at a Mylius ridden with tears, still thinking he was beautiful. He let a soft, sad smile slip before turning back to board the plane.

Upon return to home, he began attending Shiganshina University, where many of his old schoolmates happened to attend as well. It was _the_ university of his city and all the cities surrounding it, so it was a given. He took no time in readjusting to life back home and reconnected with Armin and Mikasa, who missed him so much that they threw a welcome back party for him. They invited only a small group, consisting of the group of boys who had fawned over him after his sophomore year makeover and a few others here and there: Ymir, Christa, Sasha, some other faces Eren couldn’t put names to from high school. Eren was just glad he didn’t see any too familiar faces there.

He reconnected with Jean, too, and their old remnant of a friendship—or whatever it was—evolved into a year as bickering best friends. Jean no longer openly fawned over Eren, and in contrast they often threw insult after insult at one another, half of the time in good spirit. It was as if the years Jean spent in high school teasing Eren by the lockers never happened. Reciprocated mocking and taunting was a norm, and their friends deemed them inseparable despite seeming as if they couldn’t stand each other half the time.

They later moved in together into a two-room apartment on the north side of town closer to the main city. To the shock of neither of them, they embarked on a year-long journey as casual fuck buddies after the initial year of platonic friendship. Then, their two-year friendship and one year of mutualistic sex (with an added six-month period of confused feelings) evolved into a two-year-and-counting romantic relationship. They graduated with bachelor’s together at Shiganshina in the meantime, and Eren began working his new job at some company in the city while Jean studied for his master’s in law. They come home to each other at the end of the day, and it works for them.

It has been three months into working at the company and Eren has already been promoted to senior Japanese interpreter (which they actually needed a few of, seeing as though their animation department is keen on marketing there) and junior German interpreter. He might be their only German interpreter, actually, but he muses his trilingualism is probably what landed him the job. He deliberates that his promotion was _probably_ because their previous prime Japanese interpreter shipped herself off to Japan to study, too, but he’s busier than ever now. He isn’t only an interpreter for meetings with Japanese production staff, investors, and their overseas department but for a plethora of documents the higher-ups need him to make coherent and, sometimes, for the animation department, too. He translates and subtitles. Which he didn’t sign up for, but the new workload(s) neared his wage to six figures and he’s not about to complain now.

_Meet in the conference room, 45th floor, 10 o’clock sharp_, his boss had chirped at him this morning. He is to interpret for their infamous animation department and some, apparently, huge media company in Japan who want to invest and add in a few of their production staff to amp it all up. So Eren is utterly grateful he decided to study for his JLPT N1 because Japanese businessmen speak is a whole ‘nother level of fluency; he gripes internally.

He finds his boss sitting alone in the room already at 9:50.

At his arrival, he looks up from his papers and tips his glasses down. “Oh, Eren, can you raise the blinds? All the way.”

“Sure, sir,” Eren answers, already beginning to make his way around the room to the switch.

All the blinds hum in unison as they automatically roll up, revealing the bright morning skyline backdrop of the conference room. Eren had to admit that any company coming to meet here would agree on his own company’s prestige from the city vantage point alone.

He looks around, though, and wonders where the rest of his companymen are. He can’t be the only one attending—they’re meeting with a _huge_ company after all.

“Sir, where is everyone else?”

His boss smacks his tongue and takes his glasses off gingerly, folding them and placing them on the table. “Well Eren, I wish I could tell you. We’re waiting for our head producer. The one who made Black Butler and Attack on Titan.”

“Oh,” Eren replies. “I’m sure he’ll be here soon, sir.”

“I’m sure as well.”

At 9:55, Eren stands just behind the head of the table, his boss, at the far end of the conference room. He straightens his collar and pushes the sleeves of his shirt up, readying himself and his best Tokyo accent.

At 9:56, he shuffles the documents in order one last time, mumbling rehearsed proposals to himself as he pushes the door to the conference room open. 

The investors aren’t there yet, he’s sure. But just the thought of them makes his stomach sink because he’s forgotten that they’re Japanese and Japanese business etiquette is painfully stringent; his company boasts creative liberty and therefore the official attire is “casual,” so his loose crew neck and slim-fit slacks may not be good enough for them. He’s so stressed he could gouge his own eyeballs out but he refrains and, distressed, hangs his head instead as he musses up his hair and stalks in.

He’s almost late. His boss knows he gets his shit done though, so he’s not expecting to be called out for it. He gets a greeting instead.

“Good morning, Levi.”

He mindlessly shoots it back, and with the doors swung open he now stands directly at the other head of the table. The room—it’s too bright with the sun shining through every wall but the one behind him and he must shield his eyes as they adjust. His pupils dilate, focusing on the—two?—figures across him.

The picture isn’t made out yet, but he hears it first.

“Levi?”

Everything inside him stops—his heart, the blood in his veins, his breath.

The earth tilts on its axis and he feels nauseous, like he’s been punched in the gut.

He hasn’t even looked up and he knows he’s too scared to. His eardrums are thumping with the blood suddenly changing course to rush the opposite direction through his veins, his body seizes where he stands, and every hair on his body stands up, electrified.

When he looks up, Eren Jaeger stands before him against the skyline, sunshine seeping around his form like some divine being who’s been sentenced to earth. He doesn’t see his boss, nor does he feel the papers slipping out of his hands. All he sees is what his memories recognize as his first love, the person he’s been waiting for for the past seven years, the object of both his most disgustingly hopeful dreams as well as nightmares that leave him panicked and sweating in the middle of the night.

His face has all the angles expected now that he’s grown. He’s filled out the body he was given in all the right places. His eyes, wide, still embrace Levi in luminescent rays of emerald and viridian.

His eyes.

His eyes.

They’re staring straight through Eren, into him as if the boss isn’t calling out his name for letting go of stacks of documents and files they needed to go over soon.

So this is the head producer his boss mentioned.

He doesn’t know what else to say, so he just waits what feels like minutes, eyes glued on Levi’s until the man rushes to bend down and pick up all his files, hastily excusing himself to the boss and sitting down beside him. Eren continues to stare at the top of his head.

The boss seems to have completely ignored the fact that Eren knows his head producer by name despite never having met him, probably lost in the commotion of flying proposals. The meeting is starting soon and nerves are standing on end; he can tell as he watches the two of them brief each other on what they’ll say.

Levi looks nervous. He had never looked nervous before, so either he’s genuinely concerned for their corporate partners’ reaction to the company attire or it’s because of _him_.

In spite of the posture he professionally adopts, Eren is too. This just was not the way he envisioned himself seeing the man again, if ever. Gulping, he waddles a bit with his hands clasped behind his back trying to find his comfort zone if not to will himself, psych himself into composure. He clears his throat.

He notices Levi twitch at the sound and still, though as soon as he does it’s over so the boss doesn’t ask him what’s wrong either.

He's going to have to speak to Levi during this meeting, he realizes. And Levi is going to have to speak to him too. It’s his job.

Frankly, all Levi can think about during the entire meeting is how tall Eren has become—specifically how much taller than him—but he’s become a _real_ adult. He’s not the kid whose face he can pull from his memories even if his eyes tell Levi otherwise. He’s changed outwardly and if seven years apart means anything, then his person has changed as well.

He’s matured—that’s the word. Eren hovers around the conference room giving translated pointers and stands tall, hands clasped behind his back and disciplined, when he’s meant to. It’s… enchanting. To be able to see the change, yet disheartening knowing he wasn’t there to witness the bloom.

He might take up another language as a side project if this is what it’s added to the brat, a certain polished charm that’s a stark contrast from his childlike demeanor a decade ago.

Levi’s designated portion officially concluded a while ago so he’s been unintentionally tuning himself out to the rest. As if he can only hear Eren, and mentions of Eren, his ears perk when his boss speaks.

“Eren, I’m going to be sending you off with this joint animation and production team, so from now until this new series is complete, you’re under Ackerman.”

His eyes shoot open from their daydream at the mention of his name, but he doesn’t think he would’ve heard had he not tuned in just then.

Belatedly Levi begins to process the fact that his boss has just put his ex-lover under his authority, and a spike of psychological arousal shoots up his core as well as another wave of nausea knowing that he must fix things if they’re to act normal in the presence of each other at all. He doesn’t mean to be so roused but it feels as if he’s been electrified, so he pushes aside the internal giddiness and cloud of anxiety because he needs to hear the rest of this.

Eren, shocked, speaks from Levi’s right as he hovers over another investor. “Wait, sir, my job entails more duties than subtitling and—”

The proximity shoots chills down his spine.

“And you _will_ do more than that. This is big, Jaeger; you’ll be making frequent trips to aid us as well as our business partners here,” he pauses to give the awaiting businessmen a curt, polite nod. Then he looks back up at Eren. “You might be doing less work and making the same amount, but this needs your hundred and ten percent. Is that a problem?”

He hears Eren’s clothes shuffle as he stands up straight. “No, sir.”

“Conference adjourned, then.”

Once the meeting room is cleared and their boss excuses himself to an early lunch, the two of them remain.

Levi turns on his heels when the other man fails to say a word in their ten seconds of solitude.

It will take time. This was expected. He doesn’t expect Eren to just up and forgive him anyway, even after all these years. It’s not something to forgive, really.

But if he were given the chance now, he would fix it without waiting for the go-ahead. He’s spent too many years away to wait anymore. Hell, he’s been daydreaming about it for the past seven years. If _Eren_ could give him the chance… well—

“Levi?”

The same as to the call of his own name before, he halts with his hand on the door, not yet daring to look over his shoulder. It’s too familiar an act and he doesn’t quite know if it’s unwelcome either.

“Yeah,” he inquires the door, “Eren.”

The name burns on the tip of his tongue. He hasn't said it aloud in so long.

There’s a pause, and Levi thinks he hears a gulp—it could be his own guttural resonation or Eren’s across the room, he doesn’t know.

With each footstep that approaches him, it feels as if time slows to give him room to breathe, to satiate his racing heartbeat, to collect himself for the shitstorm that _could_ and might and probably will rain upon him. His emotions are going crazy and it’s because he doesn’t know what to expect.

The footsteps end right on his left side. He raises his head from involuntarily staring into the floor, hand still on the door. Instead of a shitstorm, he gets—

Eren peering at him at over half a foot taller, which shocks him so much that he jumps back an inch, neck snapping upright (for height).

Yeah, he’s taller now which Levi could already tell from when he was moving all over the damn meeting room and his eyes couldn’t pry themselves off a man obviously trying to do his job, but he didn’t have to be giving Levi that _smile_.

Eren, pushing the other door open to which Levi follows suit, lets his smile linger and Levi wonders—_truly wonders_—if he knows what he’s doing. That he’s shown himself after seven years of leaving Levi to deteriorate, just to give him the same smile Levi’s only seen on the face of Eren, sixteen years old, that used to be meant for him. This time, it doesn’t run that deep. He can tell.

“Brat,” he says, catching up to him. Even the back of his shoulders look like a man’s, loosely framed and fitted by gray fabric that makes Levi’s breath hitch. He himself is comparable but considering who Eren is to him—he doesn’t want to delve into that train of thought. “Wait.”

“I’m waiting, Levi,” he replies as he continues walking ahead.

He catches up to him after what seems like hours of thoughts rushing through his head, but the only thing he can muster is—

“Do you want lunch together?”

They both stare again—they’re doing that a lot today—one seemingly calm and placated and the other completely unsettled, confused out of his wits. The two of them blink in unison and continue walking as if they hadn’t just asked each other the same thing, and the feigned normalcy really stirs something inside of Levi that makes his stomach churn. This isn’t normal, he cheated on him, but why is Eren so okay in front of him?

“I suppose that’s a yes if you’re coming to my floor.”

Levi hasn’t pressed another button in the elevator because that’s precisely the reason why; he just… needs to process all his thoughts before verbalizing them.

“Uh huh.”

“Sorry that this is so awkward. I just didn’t expect you to be working—well, I didn’t expect you. In general.”

“Yeah. Well, I’m sorry that it’s 25 floors till the cafeteria.”

“Don’t be,” Eren chuckles lightly, though it lacks humor. “I wanna play catch up.”

For some reason that makes the hairs on the back of Levi’s neck stand up. It’s the imminent doom, the heavy confrontation he’s expected for so long, but it’s also the chance that his first love just doesn’t hate him—though he’s lamented over this slim possibility for years now.

He doesn’t know if Eren is truly as collected as he’s seeming and he cannot even base it off the Eren he knows. He’s completely shaken in comparison.

But as they eat their Japanese lunch boxes from the company’s restaurant row, it turns out everything is okay. At least Eren is, and Levi somewhat subdued.

“Where… What have you been doing all this time?” Levi asks after a long, awkward silence.

It’s completely off topic now, but there’s really no easy way to bring it up. The silence followed a painful bout of smalltalk about which co-workers they know and for how long they’ve been at the company, and now that Eren pokes around at his rice lethargically, not even really looking up, he wants to ask.

Levi _needs_ to ask… He’s been dying to know for years.

His gaze is still, unwavering from Eren’s own now as he clacks his chopsticks together to fill the silence. He doesn’t let his expression falter no matter how badly he wants to tremble throughout this entire unplanned ordeal.

“I went to Germany for a few years. My grandma got sick and so… yeah,” he mumbles.

Levi bites his lower lip in between his teeth. “Germany had your ass in college, too?”

“No, I came back. Right before it started, then I re-kindled with everybody from high school. We ended up going to the same uni anyway.”

“I wouldn’t say everybody.”

He chuckles lightly, scratching the back of his neck in earnest. He gazes up shyly now. “You can’t blame me.”

Levi seems to settle into the comfort of such an out-of-place casual chuckle, but he sighs, glancing away. “...I know it’s been seven years, but I—”

Eren cuts him off, “That’s okay—it’s been just that, seven years already. Don’t sweat it.”

They may have only spent a short and meaningful time together but Levi recognizes a fake smile when he sees it. He swallows his words unsaid. “I thought I needed it for closure.”

“You were eighteen—I’m hardly gonna blame an underdeveloped brain, even if you should’ve known better.”

“It was more the alcohol than anything—” he begins, but he cuts himself off with the reminder that that isn’t an excuse. He clears his throat and checks his watch.

Admittedly… Levi has missed Eren. So much more than he thought he did, because those shining cerulean gems and that floppy, short hair tug at something inside of him that he can only akin to the juvenile affection he hasn’t felt in years.

“Mind continuing catch up over dinner, brat?”

“Where?” he asks, waving a piece of meat around with his chopsticks.

Levi is hit with a vision of the two of them suddenly, so abruptly surreal he feels as if he’s been thrown into the past. It’s Eren’s younger, rounder face before him on the bench. His eyes are gold, fallen cherry blossoms are scattered across the ground and all over his hair. He’s waving around a piece of grilled beef from the lunch box they share, and Levi smiles around his canister of tea.

He snaps out of his reverie.

“My place after work. I live nearby and I’m making steaks.”

“Tonight…? That’s kind of late and I have some—” He pauses mid-sentence as they discard their scraps and falters in his steps, too. “Actually, sure.”

“I’ll meet you at the lobby when I’m off.”

He parts with Eren at the elevator, where he goes down and Eren goes up.

When Eren had left, for the first time, Levi truly began to understand what madness was. It felt like—like his chest was being torn to shreds every waking moment of the day for months at a time, because every time Eren Jaeger ran through his mind all he felt was the most potent combination of regret, anguish, stupidity, and remorse. It's as if he had stuffed a fat cigar to the seams with all of those and smoked it everyday so his mind was constantly stuck in this depressing, miserable abyss.

He thought Farlan had broken his heart. Then, he thought Erwin had shattered it. When Eren left without a single word, without ever communicating with him again, he realized then that true heartbreak was devastation and desolation, inconsolable despair and helplessness, a pure, raw, constant misery as the cherry on top to racing anxiety and self-hatred.

He dwelled in his own psychological madness for over a year before Hanji forced him to get out and meet new people. He was attending Shiganshina then so, to appease Hanji as well as try to mend himself, he engaged in flings with several people during his time there. Each semester brought a different body (or two), as Levi couldn’t seem to hold onto them as he did with Eren. Majorly because he didn’t _want_ to. Nothing—no one had bloomed since him.

Even after resigning to casual fucking, no one ever hit in the way Eren did—bright viridian eyes, enchanting laughter, perfect smile, passion, temper; all of it. He wanted all of it and no one person had it. Except Eren. He had never been intimate with him, yet Levi’s mind was frequently invaded with thoughts of him, him, him whenever he’d fuck another person. As if he was subconsciously aware that _that_ was right and _this_ wasn’t.

That is one of his biggest regrets—not having been able to show Eren how much he _loved_ him, both in words and through actions.

And now, Levi finds himself in a situation he would not have even imagined himself in had it been the night before. He’s cooking dinner while the boy who he cheated on seven years prior, who deserted him immediately after and never spoke to him again, waits for him on Levi’s sectional. He’s lying lengthwise on the long, L-shaped segment of it, preoccupied with whatever is on the TV.

It feels too comfortable, but it also feels like Eren is purposely busying himself in order to avoid the awkwardness that inevitably lends itself to a situation such as this.

He puts the steaks into the oven to finish, grabs a bottle of wine, then makes his way to the unoccupied side of the sectional. He pours the glasses and sets one on the coffee table, noticing that Eren has hardly moved a muscle since.

Now, with the boy sitting directly in front of him as if these seven long years had passed by like a breeze, it feels like there is only one right thing to do.

Eren doesn’t know exactly what he wants out of tonight. He has Jean waiting on him at home, granted he usually has class until six o’clock anyway, and while Jean is perfectly capable of handling himself, Eren feels obviously treacherous having this late of a dinner with his ex-boyfriend. Of all people, the man who started it all for Eren eleven years prior.

It doesn’t help at all that the two know each other. Jean had mentioned during the beginning of their friendship that Levi, pissed, once questioned him about Eren’s whereabouts, but he hadn’t known it himself back then and couldn’t give a clear answer. When he brought it up again after they started fucking, Jean went on to rejoice in re-kindling with Eren before Levi did.

He had called it fate and Eren had agreed; but with the situation at hand, he thinks maybe fate is playing matchmaker once again. More horrifyingly, he’s unsure if he minds or not.

The TV flickers in the background and the aromas of rich butter and garlic envelop his senses, reminding him again of just how _fucked up_ it is that he blindly accepted a dinner date proposal from his cheating ex while his partner waits at home. It’s more fucked that he hasn’t told either of them about each other.

Too many thoughts crash around in his head and heart all at once.

Initially, he thought seven years would have been enough to quell them, but one take at Levi, broad shoulders and back facing him and looming over the stovetop making _dinner_, launches him into this untouchable, domestic fantasy that he feels too comfortable imagining for his feelings to be deemed completely platonic. However, he reckons seven years is nothing in the case of Levi, the man he chased for near-half a decade whom he had come to love so soon that it was scary. But it felt so _right_ back then. Everything about Levi had felt right, until… 

What could a high schooler know though?

Levi comes to sit next to him where he’s internally brooding, and with him he brings a bottle of white wine and two glasses. He offers one to Eren. He’s grateful—he definitely needs it.

Levi speaks before he does. “What’s on your mind, brat?”

“I’m 23, Levi, you can stop with the names.” He means it as a joke—he really doesn’t mind much at all. It’s not a pet name, but it carries a certain fondness that he supposes only the two of them would understand. He smiles a bit so the corners of his mouth turn up.

“No,” he deadpans. He takes a huge swig of his wine and sits back, kicking his socked feet up onto the coffee table.

Eren follows suit in chugging the wine and receives a raised eyebrow in response when his glass is emptied. He excuses himself as he pours another one. “I’m… well, I guess. I’m just thinking about how fucked this kind of is—that I’m here again.”

“Yeah, well, who knew?” Levi asks rhetorically. He takes another large swig.

“Did you figure we’d share a dinner again after all these years?”

“I didn’t think I’d see you again at _all_ after these past few years, Jaeger.”

Eren laughs, loose, then takes his time finishing off another glass. He supposes he should explain because it’s like Levi is purposely imploring. He doesn’t blame him; he deserves answers too.

“That one night,” he starts, “I wanted to throw up all the meals we had together—and it was like a real, physical nausea—so I really never thought I’d be having wine at your place on a Friday evening.”

Levi pauses. He’s brought up that same night once more in earnest, but Levi knows it’s bugging Eren the same way it’s bugging him. He wants to fix things no matter how far into the past they were and no matter how unaffected Eren is trying to seem.

Following a final savored gulp, he bemoans, “Brat, I am truly fucking sorry for the stupid drunken shit I did that night. And I know it’s my fault, I went through—well—many fucking years just replaying it over and over in my head hoping to change the fact that I saw your heart break in your eyes, but—”

Eren sits up shakily, teetering with his empty glass.

“That’s all,” Levi finishes. “I’m sorry. For hurting you so badly that you had to move to Germany to avoid me.”

That’s not what he had meant to say. He meant to give a proper apology, but something about the way Eren’s eyes flicker with the TV tells him to stop. He doesn’t want to hurt him again.

Flushed, Eren corrects, “Ah, well, Germany was for my grandma. But I’ll admit, it did help. I met a boy there.”

“Oh?” Levi inquires, interest piqued. This time he’s the one to sit up. The involuntary crease between his brows softens just a bit.

“Yeah, a pretty boy named Mylius.” Eren refills his glass once more. “He and I were together until I left Germany, so a year and a half.”

“That’s a long time.”

“I suppose so,” Eren replies, lips on the brim of the glass and maintaining eye contact with Levi the whole time. “He made me think of someone, but he also reminded me that I prefer a more tenebrous beauty.”

Levi looks away then, and he clears his full glass in one chug. That bottle would definitely be emptied by night’s end.

He’s fluctuating between former anguish and present desire. Levi is completely overwhelmed and anything he feels is amplified by all the electric shocks he keeps feeling through his heart and fingertips.

“What about you?” Eren asks.

“I fucked around in college—went to Shiganshina, too, by the way—but I never really dated a single someone at any point. They were all just… not,” he clears his throat, “Well, I had my reasons.”

“Not what?” Eren pries. He’s sipping his wine slowly now, probably because he’s mildly intoxicated. It was quite a bit of wine to chug without substance.

Levi hesitates, drinking wine in favor of stalling, but gives in. Actively trying not to waver, he responds, “Not you. None of them were you, obviously.”

“You forwent dating for seven years because they weren’t me?”

“You become deaf in seven years or what, brat?”

“No—I’m just shocked, that's all… All the while I was dating, I thought you would’ve, too.”

“Yeah, well,” Levi exasperatedly sighs, pursing his lips, “I tried. Didn’t work out. Guess I never really got over you like that.”

It’s not the intoxication making him hear things, Levi thinks, because he swears he hears Eren mumbling, hardly audible, a “me neither.” Or maybe you hear what you want to hear.

He ignores it. If Eren wanted to make it heard, he would. Besides, a drunken mind did things; he knew this best.

“You’re not dating anyone now, then?” he asks Levi.

He _tch_es, clicking his tongue. “What did I just say? No. Are you?”

Eren’s glass suddenly clinks on his teeth, shocking them both and sloshing around as he tries to steady himself.

Levi is ever so glad he brought out the white wine and not the red, because his velvety sectional doesn’t deserve this.

“No—I’m not, not really,” Eren manages to wheeze out. He puts a hand over his chest and throws the rest of the glass back again, making a noise of exaggerated refreshment when he finishes (with wine? Levi bemusedly wonders) before clinking it back down on the table.

“What the hell is ‘not really’ dating someone.”

“Sorry, just drunk.”

_Why_, oh why did he just deny the existence of his own fucking boyfriend of two years to Levi? This is a shithole he’s knowingly digging for himself, a ticking bomb waiting to explode directly in his face if he doesn’t fix it now; because he’s not a single man, yet he’s acting like one. Jean isn’t the sensitive type, and even yet Eren is certain there are lines he’s not meant to cross.

Levi is close to him before he can register much else, one arm across his body against the armrest for support, and he’s leaning down to meet eye-to-eye with Eren, who lies parallel to the floor. He moves slowly at first—Eren feels like silvery eyes have been boring holes into him for minutes already—then halts at just a few centimeters away. The tips of their noses are touching. Eren can’t breathe.

At this distance, Eren can smell the green tea body wash Levi still uses and feel the heat of their mingling breaths down his neck. It’s all very oddly comforting. For just a moment, he relishes in the sweet, unfamiliar yet familiar proximity he didn’t realize he so longed for.

Levi chooses that moment when Eren is lost in his own yearned desires to bring his free hand up to grip at Eren’s jaw, turning his head to the side. Already looming, Levi leans his body in closer, whispering against his neck, “Then will you be okay with this?”

This is not what he expected when he walked through the door to Levi’s apartment.

This all feels so wrong, but more significantly it feels like he’s young and regrettably in love again and that, above all else, it’s _right_. Seven years of desire locked away has broken through the floodgates and it’s all come rushing out. His upper body is practically pinned to the cushions as he unknowingly nods, not even facing Levi with him stretching Eren’s neck the way he is.

He shouldn’t be nodding. He has no idea _what_ has prompted him to oblige, to let Levi in so fucking easily; Levi can’t even really be at fault because he has not a single clue about Eren’s current lover. He’s about to commit an act of adultery, one eerily similar to one he has experienced before, but not a single warning sign goes off in his head as Levi begins to drag his lips across Eren’s neck.

The way Levi kisses him with gentle fervor, careful not to miss any of the weak spots he remembers and paying attention to the supple pulse under his jaw, reminds him of their fervent high school selves—making out in the locker rooms during lunch and, frankly, giving head in a bathroom stall during school events. The way Levi swipes his tongue against the strained tendons of Eren’s neck all whilst pulling him to one side by his hair _especially_ reminds him of that second one.

Eren can’t help it. He wants this.

But he _can’t_ do to Jean what Levi did to him.

He can’t break someone’s heart the same way Levi did.

Jean isn’t home by the time Eren makes it back anyway, admittedly making Eren wonder if he should have just stayed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the difference between my snk fics and my bnha fics is... whew
> 
> it's been a while. as i've now shifted to present tense, if anyone read the first chapter when it was posted and remembered it, it's like you're living the time skip yourself! lol i love this fic though, it's on par with cc, truly. considering my name is ernjager i should have more snk works, but the other two are 1. a bnha crossover and 2. a levi shortfic so it seems all my snk energy goes into this fic. i put a lot more feeling (and length) into this one for obvious raisins so it holds a special place in my heart.


End file.
